In a solid-state image pickup apparatus, for example, a MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) type image pickup apparatus, a technology is widely known that exposure times (accumulation times) are varied regarding the respective pixels in a pixel array unit composed by two-dimensionally arranging pixels including photoelectric conversion elements in a row-column manner, a signal having a high sensitivity and a signal having a low sensitivity are obtained depending on long and short exposure times, and the signal having the high sensitivity and the signal having the low sensitivity are synthesized for realizing a wider dynamic range.
As one of technologies for realizing a wider dynamic range, a technology is known for expanding the dynamic range by executing read of signals on a same pixel by plural times while changing the exposure time and synthesizing the respective signals obtained through the read operations performed by the plural times in a signal processing system in a later stage (for example, see Japanese Patent No. 3680366).